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Hey guys,
I recently bought a 240z and it ended up having more rust than I originally thought, thus begins my new winter project.
Pulling her home with my 1987 2WD Toyota Pickup. That was a long haul between northeast of Sacramento and Southern California. The truck performed well though!
The car sat for a while and the engine internals have rusted. The overview plan is to pull the engine, fix the front half of the car's rust problems, swap the SUs from the L24 to my rebuilt L28, install the engine, and drive it while fixing other things (interior).
Some hood damage. Hopefully I can bump these out.
Starting to inspect for rust on the passenger side frame rail/firewall interface. It's definitely in need of some work.
Inside engine bay rail.
Engine removal
In preparation for cutting into frame rails I dropped the front suspension to remove as much stressed from the rails as possible.
Stand I welded up to support car from the transmission mounts.
I've made a little more progress -- started making patch panel templates and cutting metal from the battery tray area. It looks like I'm going to be replacing a lot of metal around the battery tray area -- frame rail, battery tray inner fender, a piece of the firewall, and passenger side floor pan. Hopefully driver side isn't this bad.

Hey guys,
I'm looking for some advice on what to do for the next step of my 240z project. I have the car stripped down to a rolling shell with the engine bay primered and the underside undercoated already. I'm debating between sanding down the exterior and interior to factory primer, repairing any trouble spots in the process, and then shooting paint OR having the interior and exterior media blasting with fine crushed glass (hopefully less likely to warp) and then shooting paint. The factory paint looks okay. There are few spots that have cracked and are peeling but overall it's not bad. Some spots will have to come down to bare metal anyway for repairing. Which route do you guys think I should take? I have a large compressor and the tools to do the sanding. Media blasting would make the following easier, though:
One big issue is rust. There are several rust spots that I'm concerned about and am not sure what to do about. There's rust around the inside perimeter of the roof. There's rust inside the passenger and driver side vent plenums that run to the engine bay. There's rust inside the cowl area. There's some rust in the rockers (not too bad) and the dog legs are pretty rusty. I boroscoped most of these places and have some pictures below. The worst of it all is in the dog legs. In the other spots there rest seems to be bubbling a little but mostly on the surface -- some pitting. I'lllet the pictures do the talking.
The car:
Dog legs:
I will most likely be replacing these.
Inside the rear wheel-well area above the dog legs:
Around the the inner perimeter of the roof:
It's rusted most of the way around and the rust goes into the recessed area all the way around. This is perhaps only surface rust and would come off with a wire wheel, but the issue is accessing this area. This is where blasting would be nice and this is one of my biggest concern areas.
Inside the driver and passenger vent air plenums:
Some other rust around the hatch sill:
What do you guys think I should do about the rust areas? Should I get everything blasted as best they can do then seal it? Should I sand/wire brush everything I can and treat it with some ospho or other converter then seal it and use cavity wax? I have these products on hand. I've already put a lot of money into this project so I'm all in and want this to be near show quality and last a long time. I don't know if it's worth it to split the seams on some of that rust or not. How hard is it to remove the roof? I did my own floor pans, battery box, and frame rails.